Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 112

You'll never guess which battle the British voted for as their greatest single ever

Was it Normandy?
Blenheim? Waterloo? Goose Green? No to all.

Perhaps Naseby or
Culloden? No again. El Alamein? Nope.

It was, indeed, Imphal
and Kohima, the
turning point in the fighting in South Asia during World War II. Now, I'm a
Burma theater fan as much as the next guy. But this still surprised me. I
wonder why they picked that. It wasn't just because President
Obama's grandfather
served there. Perhaps it was the ever-growing reputation of General
Slim?

(HT
to PL who had to read the original article upside down)

A 'Foreign Affairs' headline that made me cringe: 'The Irony of American Strategy'

Richard Haass is a pretty smart
guy, but he let someone talk him into this headline: ‘The Irony of American Strategy.'

Like, gag me with a
spoon. Cute? Maybe. But I think that
headline could only be written by someone who had not lost someone in the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last 12 years.

Actually the article isn't bad,
although it leans heavily on the weak thought that 10 years ago the United
States got deeply involved in the Middle East when it didn't need to, but now
when it wants to get out, it can't. That strikes me more as an op-ed (or blog
post) than a full-blown Foreign Affairs
thumbsucker. 

Did we really 'win' in Iraq? Tom doesn't think so -- and neither does General Dubik

The other day a couple of commenters discussing
innovation in the military mentioned one change (fwiw, the company-level
intelligence cell) as a big reason why "we won in Iraq."

Hmm, I thought: Did we actually win that war? I am not sure.
It doesn't feel like it. Yes, we got out with our shirts on. But win?

I thought about this again when I read this thoughtful comment by Lt. Gen. James
Dubik in the May issue of ARMY magazine:

America is confusing "withdrawing from a war" with "ending a
war." The two are very different. A war ends when strategic objectives are met
or an enemy is defeated and recognizes its defeat. In Iraq, the war continues
-- albeit at a level that the Iraqi security forces are, so far, able to handle
and the Iraqi government can manage.

Spec Op 2nd thoughts: Did the police do that well in the Boston bomber hunt?

There is no question, I think, that catching one of the Boston bombers alive
was a good thing. Even so, this note, from a smart Special Operator, gave me
pause:

... the
cops did not approach this well. It was a strategic mistake to shut down the city, but then they did a
cordon and search model on homes in the
area by getting everyone out by gunpoint. For one guy, not one with a nuke, or
a bio weapon, or anything like that and took people out of their homes by gunpoint. Poor decision.

On top of that, it was (as my friend Tim Noah points out) just plain
stoopid to charge the survivor with use of a weapon of mass destruction.  Over-reaction on top of over-reaction.  

Army captain: Dudes! Stop your whining, you’ve got a pretty good fat deal already

By "A Happy Camper"

Best Defense guest columnist

I am an Army captain with five years of service,
married to a brilliant young woman.

Ideally, we would live downtown in a vibrant
metropolis where we can walk or take public transit everywhere; my work would
involve developing some sort of deep technical expertise in furtherance of
national security, and my wife would be able to climb the ladder of her own
lucrative career. Of course we'd also like to retain my current salary relative
to our cost of living, my 30 days of annual leave, numerous four-day weekends,
paid-for educational opportunities, as well as the option to collect a pension
and virtually free healthcare for life after just 20 years.

Although reality falls short of our dreams, it's
still pretty good. My wife got into teaching after we married because of its
"portability," and the Army, to its credit, paid for her
certification program through MyCAA. Teaching pays less than she might have
earned otherwise with her education, and there will be frustrations as we move
around (transferring her license, gaps in employment, leaving before vesting in
any retirement plan), but she was hired immediately by the school district here
and given good opportunities for professional development. As for my own work,
I hope to find some greater depth and specialization by moving into a certain
functional area. We can't put down roots in a big city yet, but I can choose to
attend graduate school in one, and we could be assigned to Washington, DC at
some point. Finally, when I add up the total compensation for 20 years of
service -- salary, pension (assuming we survive to average life expectancy),
healthcare, undergraduate, graduate, and professional education -- it comes to
about $5 million (adjusted to 2013
dollars). That's $250,000 per year in uniform, with several of those years
spent as a student in flight school, CCC, ILE, graduate school, etc.

I believe that I'd be competitive for civilian jobs
with my STEM degree from a top-50 university, and many complaints about the
Army definitely resonate with me, but it seems unrealistic to expect a much
better deal than we're already getting. So for now I'm one junior officer that
actually plans to stay in. That said, I value my marriage above all else; if my
wife gave me an ultimatum because she wanted a high-powered career in big law
or finance, or because she couldn't handle another deployment, I would choose
to leave too.

The best non-American military books: I'd like some suggestions for a top 10 list

A
major in the 101st Airborne suggests that we do a reading list of modern
military books that are not about the American military experience (and not the usual classics). Three of his
suggestions are The Dambusters, Defeat into Victory , and Churchill's Generals.

To that start, I'd add Keegan's Face of Battle and Alistair Horne's Savage War of Peace. What else? I'll
allow histories, memoirs, novels, and poetry.

Comment of the day: Hey, general, what about my $200,000+ in law school debt?

This comment was written the other day in the
discussion of how much the military needs to adjust policies and cultures to
accommodate the modern two-career marriage.

I've been seeing a
lot of blimpish comments about how today's younger officers need to pull up
their socks and adjust. But a major difference is that wives 50 years ago
typically didn't arrive at Camp Swampy with a huge law school debt.

I am a lawyer married to my high school sweetheart
whose dream was always to join the military. I've known about his Army
aspirations almost as long as I've known him and he has known about my dream to
become a lawyer. I just never dreamed it would be this difficult to find any
kind of work that requires a degree. I even was hired to work for JAG the
summer between law school years as a GS 7. Now that I actually have a degree
and a license, I cannot even get an interview for ANY federal job, let alone a
legal one. I am not whining, because I chose this life when I chose my husband.
But, it's a sad state of affairs for anyone who graduates with a law degree from
a top school in the top 15 percent of her class to have to settle for an $8 an
hour receptionist position. I wouldn't lose as much sleep over it if I wasn't
over $200K in debt from law school.

I'm incredibly proud of my husband's career and
accomplishments. He loves serving our country and I have loved supporting him
through training and two deployments. But our future is uncertain, and everyday
I pray that I find an opportunity that will give me a chance at a professional
life of my own. I have sacrificed and invested in my own future as well and I
just want to put my skills to use and earn a living.

Weird stuff I didn't know, naval dept.: Two sea areas with no compass variation

Thomas J. Cutler writes in the March issue of Proceedings that there are "only two
places where there is no compass variation." In other words, where "both gyro
and magnetic compasses are perfectly aligned."

One of those places
is the Bermuda Triangle. The other is a region in the Pacific called, he notes,
"the ‘Devil's Sea,' for it, too, is known for mysterious disappearances." It
isn't clear what the lack of variation has to do with the two areas'
reputations for trouble, he notes.   

ARMOR magazine on getting back to real soldiering: An article on 'HTESWAKAF'

The January-March issue of ARMOR magazine offers
an article provocatively titled "How to Eat Steak with a Knife and Fork! A
Return to the Core Competencies That Make Our Maneuver Force Indomitable."

Let's call it "HTESWAKAF" for
short.

I am all for being competent. But I also am for winning our
wars. I worry that we are not trying to do both. In other words, is the new
emphasis on "core competencies" a way of turning away from the lessons of the
last 12 years of our wars? Like, what if the enemy isn't serving steak?

Overall, I am a bit puzzled by such a
focus on tactical abilities, because I think our biggest flaws in the post-9/11
wars have been strategic, with generals neither able to recognize the nature of
their conflicts or to adjust to them. Yet I see little work being done there.
And one lesson of Iraq 2003-06 was that good tactics won't fix bad strategy.

Are Iraqi Sunni insurgents fleeing Syria?

I was surprised to
see that Izzat al-Douri, a top Baathist leader, is being hunted
around Tikrit. He was supposed to have fled
to Syria long ago.

If so, what does that
mean about the war in Syria? It seems to me to be an encouraging sign.